Dr. Sally Ride’s Inspiring Career – This Forgotten Day in Houston

On this day, astronaut Dr. Sally Ride announced that she was leaving NASA despite her thriving career.

Dr. Ride’s first mission to space was aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983, making her the first American woman in space, as well as the youngest, at 32 years old. Dr. Ride flew only one more mission because the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 cancelled plans for a third.

Dr. Ride was the only person to investigate both shuttle tragedies; the Shuttle Challenger explosion, and the Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. She continued to work for NASA at the headquarters in Washington D.C. as a special assistant planning the future of the space agency. There she wrote a report titled, “Leadership and America’s Future in Space,” which, covered topics like; Exploration of our Solar System and Humans on Mars. But shortly after her time in D.C., Dr. Ride surprisingly resigned from NASA.

Her focus turned to education, and she became a fellow at Stanford before moving on to teach physics at the University of California-San Diego. Dr. Ride’s time spent in space lent a hand in the children’s books she wrote about space travel, the carbon footprint, and what exploring mars will be like. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science which came from her long-time passion for motivating young kids, especially girls interested in pursuing careers in science.

Dr. Ride passed away on July 23, 2012 after a 17-month long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Did Dr. Ride inspire you to pursue a career in the field of science? Tell us in the comments below, or tweet our host, Michael Callahan, @MCallahanTV using #ForgottenDayHOU, and he’ll tweet you back!